Re: dem primary

["Peter T. Chattaway" <petert@interchange.ubc.ca>]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Melanie Shannon wrote:

> > If you want to know what *filmmakers* mean by "documentary", and by
> > terms like "cinema verite" and so on (since there is more than one
> > kind of "documentary"), you'll have to go somewhere other than
> > Merriam-Webster.
>
> WOOOOAH.  wait a minute.  fine.  take it from someone who lives and
> works in the industry.  like me.  and the majority of my friends and
> business acquaintances.  they happen to agree that a documentary should
> be factual and objective, cinema verite being a different beast
> altogether.

You're kidding, right?  The 1959 (I think) Canadian film _Lonely Boy_ is
always shown in film courses up here as a prime example of the "cinema
verite" form of documentary -- it is both "documentary" *and* "cinema
verite".  Owen Gleiberman proposed that the filmmaking style of Michael
Moore and Nick Broomfield be called "guerrila verite", indicating that he,
too, places these directors within the "documentary" tradition while
recognizing that they also bring something new to the artform.

You say you work in "the industry".  Which industry is that?  The
"documentary" industry?  Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

> > Heck, even the "factual" criterion is called into question by film
> > scholars who analyze films like Sergei Eisenstein's _Strike!_ and
> > Oliver Stone's _JFK_ for their "documentary" qualities.
>
> now don't get ahead of yourself here.  of course there can be a
> 'personal' documentary, documenting one's own struggle or story.  and
> you can say a lot of films have 'documentary' qualities, such as JFK,
> but no one would honestly call it a documentary.

FWIW, the particular film scholar I had in mind here was Bill Nichols,
whose book _Blurred Boundaries_ I cited several years ago in an essay I
wrote on the film version of _The Late Great Planet Earth_ (is it a
"documentary" if it is about things that haven't happened yet?).

   http://peter.chattaway.com/articles/lindsey.htm

   In this regard, one could argue that writer/director Robert Amram is
   working in a manner similar to that in which Sergei Eisenstein worked
   on Strike, as described by Bill Nichols. Like Eisenstein's film,
   Amram's tries in some sense to make us "enter a realm in which we
   actively coalesce an array of fragments to bring into imaginative being
   a world that does not yet have historical existence and is therefore
   incapable of empirical documentation" (Nichols 110).

   Hal Lindsey and Robert Amram find their fragments in the stock footage,
   sidewalk interviews, news headlines, and scriptural interpretations
   they put into their film; while there is some shepherding of the
   material, whether through Lindsey's interpretations or Orson Welles'
   narrations, the viewer is meant to coalesce the wide range of subjects,
   film forms, and basic data into a perceived yet non-empirical "world"
   in which an anti-Christ already exists unknown simply because at some
   point in the immediate future he must become known, and since this
   anti-Christ exists, the evangelical Christian worldview is confirmed
   and the viewer is expected to make some life-changing conclusions. The
   purpose of The Late Great Planet Earth is not to transform world
   events, which the filmmakers believe to be fated beyond human control
   anyway; rather, the purpose is to transform the individual viewer, or
   at least to leave the viewer "disposed to action" (Nichols 108) of a
   particular sort.

> basically, captain semantics, i'm not sure what you're trying to get at,
> here.

I'm getting at the fact that your dismissal of Michael Moore as a maker of
"documentaries" based on a Merriam-Webster definition is inadequate.

> a documentary is generally accepted (and yes, actually defined) . . .

Which of course raises the questions "accepted *by who*" and "defined *by
who*".  The word "generally" doesn't settle matters at all.

> > Like I say, Merriam-Webster is not our best guide here.
>
> sorry, peter.  but neither are you.

I would never claim to be the best guide, no.  But I have studied the
subject at university and have conducted interviews with documentary
filmmakers and on and on.  Have you?  Have the folks at Merriam-Webster?

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter@chattaway.com ---
Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they
   claim remembrance, on account of their scars. -- Chris Marker, La Jetee

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